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Monday, March 9, 2015

'Antihero' from BurkhardS - 'Tyrion Lannister'

As I've mentioned before, I had huge problems deciding on an anti-hero at first, but in the end I could not pick between Discworlds Death and this one. So what do we have here. It is Tyrion Lannister from George R. R. Martin's "The Songs of of Ice and Fire” (or Game of Thrones for those who rather watch TV ;-)). I know at first he seems like an unlikely Anti-Hero. At first glance he seems to be almost more mischievous than everyone else in the series, which is hard to be honest. He does his best to gain personal power, advance his family at the expense of others and to lure those into traps that he can not manipulate.

Not the nicest person, right? Well , but if you look closer he has many good aspects about him. He tries his best to reign in the sadistic and at time sociopathic character of his nephew Joffrey and when married to poor Sansa Stark for political reasons refuses to consummate the marriage not to cause her extra pain. When you look closely, most of the time his actions that seem to be in favor of his family actually are in favor of the people of the realm and usually he does to get the the appreciation he would deserve, but rather a kick in the behind. Being born a little person and having his mother die in labour he was despised by his father and elder sister from day one and still he always tried his best to win his families appreciation. Not that he got it. What he got instead was them scheming against him and trying to kill him. So he ends up with a huge scar on his face (from an attempt on his life, while saying the capital) and having to flee to a foreign land to escape a death sentence for a murder he did not commit. For me, he is a perfect Anto-hero and actually on of my favorite characters in the books (and I am entirely glad George R. R. Martin has not killed him off (yet) in half a sentence like he did with so many other characters.

The miniature by Dark Sword is actually based on the character in the novels and not modeled on Peter Dinklage from the TV series. At first I was a bit sad about this, since I really like Dinklage´s acting and portrayal of the role, but when painting him, it is actually a good thing, since I gave me as a painter much more room for artistic license. The mini itself is really great. Nice clear line and a characterful sculpt. The only thing I did not like was the Lannister heraldry. For one I felt that the Lion had a strange shape. And it is only weak… hard to make out while painting (constantly had their website open while painting it), but to strong to ignore and just make it up. Really looking forward to painting some more minis from the series, which I got off their Kickstarter last year!

17 comments:

Always liked Tyrion one of the few characters in the series with redeeming qualities. I dropped out of reading and watching the series some time again I think they are Genius but I want something a little more cheerful for my escapism. Glad to know the little fellow is still hanging on, he looks great.

Another great choice for anti hero. Non Dinklage look aside, he's a great sculpt. Mr. Martin et al lost me when they took too long to put out books once I'd cuaght up. I also hate waiting around for the DVD's to be released, I refuse to pay for a premium channel just to watch one show. But Game of Thrones is good fun.

I read the books back to back about 4 years ago. Seeing that some character did not feature in the 4th book and only again in the 5th (same as some do not feature in the 5th and will only return in the 6th) was pretty strange. Seeing that there was well over a decade between books this must have been mighty annoying!

I actually "fear" that he will never write any more books. There were excerpts from an interview with him that were published this week here in Germany. He said that in the next season some characters would die on the HBO show that were still alive in the books. Coupled with some other comments regarding the contract with HBO I would assume the story will only be driven forward on TV now. Strange choice for a writer who has at time complained that things are too different on TV from his vision.